Laundry Day!
Trip Start
Jan 05, 2011
1
11
61
Trip End
May 18, 2011
Moss, Ostfold, Norway
Sunday, January 16, 2011
So, as you read at the end of yesterday's entry, we (myself and the two other UND students) had planned on going on a bus tour of Moss today. Well, things didn't quite work out. After hurrying to catch the 11:00 bus (we were running a bit late), we were greeted by a locked, apparently closed, tourist office. Apparently the local tourist industry shuts down for the winter. Wonderful! I guess this should come as no surprise as many tourist offices in Europe, especially in the north, are open only during the summer months to accommodate the large influx of travelers during those months.
"What now?" we wondered. We pondered long and hard, evaluating all of the possibilities. OK, maybe it wasn't that dramatic. We proceeded to walk around the town, checking out new shops, looking for bargains. We did actually find a thrift store, which was full of all kinds of sweet stuff! I was pretty tempted to buy an authentic Norwegian sweater, but I resisted (for some reason. It was really cool, believe me!). While on this walk, we swung into a grocery store to warm up for a few minutes. We met a couple high school students who were selling waffles in the store as part of a fund raiser for a school ski trip. We had just been talking about how we needed some breakfast. What luck! We stayed and talked to them for a few minutes as we enjoyed our homemade waffles. It was interesting to get to talk to them. They said it was kinda hard to do fundraisers in Norway, because the people here are thrifty. I guess I can't blame them. Things are expensive here. A half liter of Listerine costs like $12!! So, those kids now probably think that all Americans are rich and generous! Of course, we also told them how great North Dakota is :)
Otherwise, it's been another laid back day here in Norway. I did laundry, thus I thought today's entry was appropriately named. It took like 6 hours for the machine to clean my stuff! Seems a bit long, but it did a good job :) Perhaps it was a bit of operator error...
This entry has to end now. It's taken over two hours to write. Though, to be fair, we did have an hour-and-a-half impromptu snowball fight. That kinda slowed me up a bit. The snow here is perfect for snowballs and snowmen! Ahh, good times, good times...
Until next time, best wishes.
- Robert
Comments
That snowballfight was the bomb! :D